Paddle UK's paracanoe team have been doing their bit ahead of the Big Paddle Cleanup by collecting rubbish out on the River Trent.
Charlotte Henshaw MBE, Jonathan Young, Robert Oliver, Emma Wiggs MBE, Jack Eyers, Stuart Wood, Hope Gordon, Jon Tarrant and Laura Sugar MBE, all braved the bad weather on the water and bankside.
They filled five huge sacks with junk within an hour on the Trent, near to their training base at the National Watersports Centre, in Nottingham.
As the team are largely confined to training on the Regatta Lake, at Holme Pierrepont, they don't always see the extent of the problem.
Paralympic champion Charlotte Henshaw described what she saw as an “eyeopener”.
“I found a lot of stray dog balls and lots of plastic which is never good,” she said.
“Once you get right in there's plastic rubbish lurking [behind the vegetation].”
Tokyo KL3 bronze medalist Rob Oliver said: “We're all performance athletes, we want to look after the waterways, pick up all the plastic, baby wipes, things like that.
“We filled four or five bags of litter in about an hour and just shows what this is doing to the wildlife. We need to get on top of it.
“We definitely don't do enough, we're over there on the lake, sometimes we're sheltered from what it's really like here in the natural environment.
“People need to take their litter home with them. If you see it, pick it up, put it in the nearest bin.”
You can help clear our waterways of junk and plastic pollution, while raising more public awareness of the issue, by taking part in the Big Paddle Cleanup (25 May – 9 June).
In 2023, over 2,600 paddlers took part in a bid to clear their local waterways of junk and plastic pollution.
About 1,800 huge sacks were filled containing 6,767 plastic bottles, 2,739 glass bottles, 4,403 cans and 7,682 food packaging items.